Dow sustains the global engagement to reduce plastics waste

Dow
announced its intention to further invest and develop new global initiatives
and solutions that work to prevent and remediate plastic waste in the
environment.

The
initiatives, announced in conjunction with the recent Our Ocean Conference in
Bali, Indonesia, include Dow’s commitment to join several other major global
brands to become a founding investor in Circulate Capital’s 100 million dollars
effort to incubate and finance companies and infrastructure that prevent waste
in oceans. Dow also announced at the Conference that it intends to donate an
additional 1 million dollars to Ocean Conservancy over the next two years to
support waste collection and recycling solutions in Southeast Asian countries.
This money would be used for projects that build the capacity of local
non-governmental organizations and partnerships with city leaders to develop,
scale and replicate implementable solutions.

“Dow is
leading the way in our industry - by applying circular economy logic,
collaborating across the value chain, innovating new products, and through the
commitment of our employees and customers - to put an end to plastic waste in
the environment”, said Jim Fitterling, chief executive officer of Dow. “We will
continue to seek opportunities to work with our industry partners, brand
owners, local, national and international governments, NGOs and consumers to
ensure that we develop true circular economy solutions for plastics”.

Circulate Capital

Circulate
Capital’s mission is to demonstrate the viability of investment in the waste
management and recycling sectors to attract the institutional investment
capital needed to scale integrated recycling and waste management companies and
infrastructure across South and Southeast Asia. These regions have been
identified as contributing disproportionately to ocean plastic pollution
primarily because they lack the critical waste infrastructure to manage the
problem. Circulate Capital’s investment model seeks to mobilize institutional
investment capital through financial structures that blend concessionary and
philanthropic funds with market rate investment capital with a view to
mitigating risk and demonstrating that investment in the resource recovery sector
can ultimately provide attractive financial returns. Circulate Capital expects
to receive 100 million dollars in combined funding from a variety of the
world’s leading consumer packaged goods and chemical companies.

“This is
another important collaboration for Dow and reflective of our commitment to
working alongside partners that share our desire to drive solutions to this
critical issue”, said Diego Donoso, business president of Dow Packaging and
Specialty Plastics. “Circulate Capital’s work is important because it empowers
local people in the regions most impacted by lack of waste management
infrastructure to develop actionable and scalable solutions within their
communities. There are many people with both the ideas and the resolve to
tackle this waste challenge and Dow is proud to help provide the capital to
transform those ideas into solutions”.

Ocean Conservancy

Ocean
Conservancy is working to protect the ocean from today’s greatest global
challenges. Together with its partners, the organization creates science-based
solutions for a healthy ocean and the wildlife and communities that depend on
it. Dow’s latest 1 million dollars donation to Ocean Conservancy builds upon
the more than 20-year relationship between the organizations. As a major
sponsor of the organization’s annual International Coastal Cleanup, Dow and
Ocean Conservancy founded the Trash Free Seas Alliance (TFSA) in 2012, a
coalition of businesses, academics and NGOs, to analyze and address upstream
causes of ocean plastic pollution.

“Partnering
with organizations such as Ocean Conservancy are essential to Dow’s commitment
to advancing end-of-life solutions for plastic, as we accelerate innovation
focused on driving new types of recycling processes, supporting reusability and
using fewer resources,” said Mike Witt, Dow’s corporate director of Plastics
Circular Economy. “Reducing the amount of plastic required to create products
and improving the recyclability of plastics - while maintaining the benefits
people need from plastics - are important parts of the solution that we support
through research and collaboration.”

These
latest announcements add to a growing list of recent commitments and activities
Dow is leading in plastics sustainability. Several of Dow’s other efforts in
this area include:

- Engagement
with government: Dow recently announced a partnership driven by the World
Economic Forum, called the Global Plastic Action Partnership, to bring
businesses, civil society, national and local governments, community groups and
world-class experts together to collaborate on solving plastic pollution. This
partnership is initially funded by the governments of Canada and the UK, along
with Dow and several global brands, with the objective to have investable
localized solutions in place by 2020, which can then be adapted and implemented
in other countries. The first project is a collaboration with the government of
Indonesia.

- Cleanup
of existing waste: Dow’s recent #PullingOurWeight campaign, which began this
fall, included more than 5,600 Dow employees, families and friends taking part
in 55 cleanups globally, removing more than 52,500 pounds of trash and litter
from beaches and waterways.

- Waste to
energy: Dow initiated the Hefty EnergyBag years ago, a recovery initiative that
collects hard-to-recycle plastics and converts them into valuable resources. As
of July 2018, the Hefty EnergyBag program has collected more than 176,500 bags
and diverted more than 115 tons of plastics from landfill, the equivalent of
approximately 92 million snack-sized chip bags or 546 barrels of diesel fuel.
Dow recently announced another 100,000 dollars in grants for organizations to
establish programs in their communities.

- Innovating
for recyclability: Product innovation is another key part of Dow’s efforts to
end plastics waste in the environment. Dow’s RecycleReady technology enables
manufacturers to develop packaging that can qualify for the Sustainable
Packaging Coalition’s “How2Recycle” label and answer the demand for more
recyclable packaging options. Packages made with RecycleReady Technology can be
recycled via polyethylene recycling streams such as the grocery store drop-off
system in the US Dow also continues to focus on compatabilizer technologies
which allow multi-layer packaging materials to be recycled into new products,
as demonstrated with our Virtuous Circle project in South Africa.

- Investing
in recycling and waste management solutions: Another step Dow is taking to
complement its circular economy activities is to drive development of new
commercial recycling business models and growth strategies to monetize plastics
waste recycling streams globally.

- Collaborating
across value chain: Dow is also a founding member of the Sustainable Packaging
Coalition, which collaborates with packaging converters and brand owners to
increase production of stand-up pouches that can be recycled through existing
polyethylene film recycling streams.

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Press registered at the Milan Court, n.144 at 03/22/2010 Pubblisher: Mario Maggiani.Reproduction prohibited, all rights reserved. The editorial staff disclaims all responsibility regarding the worth of articles and news from various sources.